


What I've Done to You

by singedsun



Category: Ozark (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 00:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17090645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singedsun/pseuds/singedsun
Summary: Disarming looks: tiny waist, narrow shoulders, snow white skin. When he first met Ruth, he didn’t know yet that she was built to defy expectations. He didn’t know she was sharp as a tack. That she could take the whole county down with the things she knew. This slip of a woman with the golden-white curls with soft features and the mouth of a sailor.





	What I've Done to You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



She was so small.

Disarming looks: tiny waist, narrow shoulders, snow white skin. When he first met Ruth, he didn’t know yet that she was built to defy expectations. He didn’t know she was sharp as a tack. That she could take the whole county down with the things she knew. This slip of a woman with the golden-white curls with soft features and the mouth of a sailor.  

He hadn’t known what he was doing with Ruth from moment one. She’d known it, he’d known it, and the fact that she hadn’t taken everything and run to Vegas that first night was sometimes still a mystery. Even now that he knew who she was and how she worked, she still terrified him. Marty was convinced any moment now she would wake up, and leave him and everyone else all behind. 

Once he would have been okay if she left. Even if she took everything when she went, it wouldn’t have meant anything. He would’ve only been angry about losing.

He touches her cheek, a gentle stroke of fingertips over a patchwork of bruised and swollen skin. Sleep has a deep hold on her but she shivers and turns away from his touch. 

“Sorry.” It’s an instinctual apology, barely a whisper. He pushes her hair back from her face before dropping his hand. 

Marty sighs and pulls the blanket up over his shoulder as he nestles closer at her side. 

He’s apologized more than a dozen times and she says she’s okay even as squints with pain. He wants to believe her. What he understands is that he can’t burden her with his guilt. He’s been in her debt so long he can’t imagine it being different. His debt is bigger than he can pay back and even if he gives her everything she asks for, it wouldn’t be enough.

In his dreams he still hears her screams. 

In her dreams she’s still screaming. 

She won’t tell him everything. And when he’s honest with himself, Marty is glad for it. More grateful they both made it out alive. If he could make it hurt less, he would. But he knows he’s selfish (if he wasn’t he’d never ended up here) and the screams he heard were more than enough. More than he ever wants to hear again. Mostly he knows he couldn’t have held out the way she did. 

It’s not even his darkest truth. If the roles were reversed, he would’ve given her up. He’s a coward and he knows it. He’s pretty sure she knows it too. And here he is next to her, close enough to press his lips to her shoulder without more than a tilt of his head. Knowing he would’ve sold her out to save his own skin, no matter how much he’d like to be able to admit it isn’t true. 

Thinking it, he does tilt his head to kiss her bare shoulder. He breathes in the scent of her hair, still slightly damp from an earlier shower. His lips rest there against her skin. She smells of flowers and salt, never sweet. 

They rented a room in a dive motel, so she could shower and they could plan. But they both know Marty doesn’t have a plan. Instead, he let her have the shower and then the bed. He wouldn’t be in it at all if she hadn’t invited him in. She’d kissed his forehead and told him they’d figure it out in the morning. 

He doesn’t want it to be morning.

Marty closes his eyes. There’s exhaustion in his every limb but it’s a long struggle with forced deep, measured breaths before he finally allows himself to fall asleep next to Ruth. A few false starts startle him awake and he listens to the building around them as it creaks and settles, a fan rumbling in the distant vents. He clings to her in his sleep, curled around her in both protection and assurance. 

It’s only a few hours later when he wakes up, still wrapped protectively around Ruth. Her lips are turned down, a stern frown clouding her features even in her sleep. He lets go of her as quickly as he can, gently pulling away in a way that won’t further disturb her. He turns away and slips out of bed and behind him Ruth lets out a soft grunt as if sensing his distance. 

“It’s fine,” he whispers either to himself or to her, if she can hear him. “I would’ve gotten up anyway.” He mumbles the words as he turns away from her, assuring himself that waking up now is better. Maybe he can think for a little while before Ruth is ready for morning. 

Already he can see light shifting in from the slit between the drawn curtains.

There’s no chair in the room they rented, so Marty puts his back to corner on Ruth’s side of the room and slides down to the floor. He pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms over them. One hand pushes through the nest of hair sticking up wildly from his head. It’s greasy, and he wipes his hand on the leg of his pants before he realizes they’re not much better. Not much cleaner anyway. 

“Boy,” he says as the heavy weight of reality swings through him. There’s nothing more to the thought, the gravity of daylight reminding him of what he narrowly escaped. What they’d both escaped. 

How badly everything had turned out. 

He stares up at the bed and Ruth’s slender fingers peeking out over the edge. Well, most things were bad. Some were just differently bad. A good kind of bad. He scoffs, exhaling and closing his eyes. His head leans back against the wall and he hopes to avoid decisions by chasing a little more sleep.

“What?” Ruth asks. Her voice is a muffled and quiet rasp but he heard her clear enough.

When Marty looks up, her eyes are still closed. He swings his gaze around as if he imagined the sound. Glancing back at the bed he sees Ruth watching him through a single, sleepy eye, her face still pressed to the pillow. 

She mumbles, “Boy... what?”

Marty shakes his head. “Just... boy.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m sorry if I was too loud. I didn’t mean--”

Her nose scrunches. “Just boy? Who you talking to?”

“Nobody.” Marty sighs and lets his legs slide out and down, dropping his hands to the floor. “Myself.” He takes in a deep breath and shrugs. “Ruth--” 

“Nope,” she says, cutting him off. “Coffee first.”

“What?”

“Cof-fee.” She draws the word out into two long syllables and closes her eye. 

Slowly, she turns under the covers and groans with each movement. Her hands lift to her face, knuckles rubbing sleep from her eyes. 

Marty moves quickly, grunting with the effort to get back up from the floor. There’s a shitty coffee pot on the desk and he sets about to get it started, unsealing the Styrofoam cups next to it as it brews. Behind him, he hears the covers rustling as Ruth starts to get out of bed. He tosses the cups on the end of the bed and moves to help her stand up.

“I can do it, Marty. Fuck.” The word comes out with more force than the slap she gives his hand as he attempts to help her. 

“Okay, okay.” Marty lifts his hands up in front of him. 

Ruth rolls her eyes and lets the covers slide away as she stands in front of him. She turns and walks around the bed, her bare feet making soft noises on the carpet. 

Marty grabs the cups as Ruth heads into the bathroom and he finishes tearing into the plastic. He stacks the cups while the coffee finishes and tosses the plastic into the small trash bin. He stares at the coffee pot and sits on the corner of the bed, waiting for it to fill up. Absently, he thinks about Ruth behind him, naked and bruised and awake. 

A motel room isn’t really the place for this conversation, he thinks. But where is?

The water runs behind him, Ruth pads back the few steps to the bed and sits down beside him. For the last few moments the coffee streams into the pot, they sit in silence. Ruth puts her hand on his leg before leaning into his side, head on his shoulder. He lets himself be used as a resting post, and reaches around her shoulders, fingers resting gently as possible against her upper arm. 

When the coffee finishes he moves slowly to stand again, making sure she’s steady before he rises. He keeps and eye on her while he pours out a drink for her, pressing the cup into her waiting fingers. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry, Ruth.”

She takes a tentative sip of the black coffee. Her brow furrows and she stares into the cup. Another sip.

“Tastes like shit,” she says. 

“Yeah.”

He sits back down and looks down at his hands.

It’s the quietest she’s ever been, he thinks. These long moments of silence penetrated only by her short tastes of shitty motel coffee. It’s bad that she’s quiet.  _ Maybe. Probably. _

A nearly empty Styrofoam cup, dark grains at the bottom, slides into his hands. 

She leans against him again, chin on his shoulder and he can feel the depth of the question before she even asks him. He stares down at the soggy remnants of her coffee, staining the cup. He’s not ready yet. He’s shaking his head before the question even comes because he doesn’t know the answer. 

“Now what?”


End file.
